During heart surgery and other operations, surgeons often clamp major vessels to occlude blood flow within the vessels. Because such clamping may cause trauma to the blood vessel, catheters with occluding balloons have been developed. For example, Nasu, U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,708, discloses a catheter or cannula with an L-shaped distal region. About the end of the distal region is positioned a vessel-occluding balloon. Such a device requires an insertion point adjacent to where the distal end of the catheter will be located. Alternatively, rather than use the L-shaped device as disclosed by Nasu, a surgeon could insert a flexible cannula such as disclosed by Grinfeld et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,344, into, for example, the femoral artery and guide the distal end to where therapy is desired. If necessary, balloons at the distal end are then inflated.
However, both methods of therapy have certain drawbacks. For instance, an L-shaped catheter is not easily inserted into a vessel because the distal end is at right angles to the main shaft of the catheter. Thus, a surgeon must make an incision of a size adequate to accommodate the necessary maneuvering before insertion into the vessel. Instead, if a flexible cannula is inserted from the ascending aorta or femoral artery, the surgeon must contend with the difficulties and dangers of remotely guiding the distal end into its desired location. Therefore, there is a need in the art for an articulating cannula which can be inserted through a less invasive incision than required for a rigid L-shaped cannula and which avoids the difficulties of remotely guiding a flexible cannula.